


Slob Lives

by ZombyEmblem



Category: Dangan Ronpa, Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Despair, Backstory, Comedy, F/F, Fluff, M/M, Super Dangan Ronpa 2 Spoilers, referenced marriage, swears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-28 18:18:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3864910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZombyEmblem/pseuds/ZombyEmblem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>==REPOSTED FOLLOWING ebooks-tree SCARE==</p><p>It’s a summer festival! Everything is bright and cheerful! Cheap food! Music! Attractions! And guess who’s not feeling the summer spirit? These two! Maybe things will turn around for them. At any rate, their love lives are going to change drastically before this night is over.</p><p>(Day 4 of SHSL Rarepair Week! Prompt: The Fortune Arcana.)<br/>(The Wheel of Fortune symbolizes random chance, awareness of possibilities, experiencing change, and being at a turning point.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slob Lives

Metal instruments clanked together and bright, buzzing lamps squeaked as they swiveled on their hinges. One would happily sample the soft, aromatic gusts of the food stands, assuming they could actually pick out any single scent from the messy potpourri of the combined products of every damn cook in the city. There was live music, too, but the venue—a large plaza in the rustic downtown—didn’t have room to properly spread out the staging areas for all the different performers, so a casual patron would only get a jumble of three different performances at varying volumes. In this section of the festival grounds, none of the music was easily audible, so most of it was drowned out by the cacophony of all the customers milling about. And that was another thing—all these girls who dolled themselves up picked out some kind of perfume, but with so many of them choking the path, all those designer fragrances only added to the asphyxiating atmosphere. Why did anyone need to put on that much scent? Disgusting.

Strolling straight through the crowd, those huddled masses yearning to be merry, neither part of the crisp duo particularly cared for the event. But both had the impression that expressing that sentiment would ruin the other's night.

“Sure you don’t want anything?” Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu asked for probably the tenth time. His companion was never much for gifts or spending money at all, but it was a festival, wasn’t it? Weren’t you supposed to buy things? And besides, it was summer break! He certainly didn’t feel like grabbing any food; the oppressive screen of peppermint his bodyguard was wearing drowned out the sensations of the vendor’s stalls. “We can afford this kinda thing once in a while, y’know.”

“I’m fine,” came the curt reply from Peko Pekoyama. She didn’t even have a bag with her to carry any extra belongings, so she wasn’t prepared to buy any gifts. Still, though, she could have pretended to consider the offer. Formal and cool, she matched the minty freshness of her chosen perfume perfectly, maybe unintentionally. Her silver hair was done up in an extravagant bun, its convoluted size necessitated by sheer volume. Combined with her plain black yukata, tied back with a red obi, it gave her a matronly appearance. In hindsight, his own yukata—an obnoxious yellow number—didn’t just clash disastrously, it also looked babyish as hell. He’d been planning to wear something a bit more sophisticated, but none of the darker garments fit him. He didn’t even fit into the one he’d just bought weeks earlier, even though he checked the measurements and they matched the most recent ones he’d gotten of himself.

Which led to the crown jewel of disgraceful insults: he had to wear one of his sister’s yukatas.

If people noticed it was a women’s garment, he could only hope a nice glare would satisfy them.

Peko abruptly jerked her head up and squinted at something ahead of them. Fuyuhiko tried to follow her line of sight, but he couldn’t see over the crowds (oh, great, like he needed to be reminded of that), so he nudged his companion. “What is it?”

The swordfighter blinked rapidly like her eyes were bothering her. “One of the attractions down the path has a light-up sign. It's... a bit obnoxious.”

Light-up sign? Who the hell at this festival had the money for that? His curiosity agitated now, Fuyuhiko began weaving through the throng of people and very politely shoving their stench out of the way (strawberry, jasmine, lavender, ocean breeze, pine, okay, who the _fuck_ wears pine-scented perfume to a festival?)— Peko followed along behind him, slightly less concerned with courtesy than with keeping an eye on her charge. They emerged to find easily the most extravagant tent in the plaza.

The actual tent had a deep green canvas and was damn tall. The flap was drawn open with ropes to reveal an inner space furnished with a single round table about the size of an outdoor café table, two chairs, and a couple shelves crammed full of weird knickknacks and other pointless shit. Buzzing softly in LED light was the apparent name of the stall, “Creel of Fortune.” Then the owner walked out.

It was hard to count the number of things wrong with the guy’s appearance. His hair was styled into what looked like dreads or braids of some kind, but they jutted out like sunbeams or tree branches at a ton of awkward angles. He hadn’t shaved in a little bit, either, and—what the fuck? He was wearing a kimono, okay, fine, but it was loose and baggy and disheveled as all hell. Most likely the bad tying job on his obi (which was too low) was to blame for it. In fact, the amount of slack in the thing meant that the neckline was wide as hell, and Fuyuhiko could see the bastard was wearing some kind of shirt under the kimono. It was collared (thus allowing the tie—yes, there was a tie), but it was less of a dress shirt and more of a… robe? Almost like some kind of movie wizard.

In short? Total weirdo.

“Heyyyyy!” The slob held out his arms in a wide welcoming gesture, grinning openly. “Welcome to the Creel of Fortune, folks! My name’s Yasuhiro Hagakure, and I run the most eye-opening, most astounding, most heart-pounding stall here! Care to try it out?”

Peko’s “no thanks” collided with her companion’s “actually.” Hagakure’s face lit up and he sauntered back into the tent with a “Come on in, then!” thrown over his shoulder. Fuyuhiko turned to face his bodyguard and met an expression of heightened displeasure.

Before she could begin explaining her objections, she was pulled along by her sleeve into the tent. Fuyuhiko cut her off with a “What’s the big deal, anyway? Look, just give it a chance!” But as they stepped inside, they realized that of the chairs, only one was there for customers.

“Sorry, guys, but I can only do one person’s fortune at a time,” Hagakure explained, turning up his palms in apology. “One of you will have to wait outside.”

Fuyuhiko felt the slip of fabric tear itself clean out of his hand. “Absolutely not.”

He threw up his hands and rolled his eyes. “It’s fine, dammit! Just—I’m not gonna get jumped or anything!”

“It’s unacceptable, Youn—Kuzuryuu,” she answered, nearly slipping on the pretense of simple friendship they were hiding under. “It’s simply unreasonable.”

Fuyuhiko grabbed her upper arm and pulled her closer, scooting both of them toward the opening of the exit. Tossing a careful glance at the fortune-teller, he muttered back to Peko, “Look, I can’t explain this, but I really need to try this. Check out the tech this guy’s got—he had to pay for it, and if he can afford all this, he must be making decent money, right?” This train of thought was building itself only as it chugged along, and if not for frequent gestures with his free hand, the gangster most likely would have careened into a ditch of confusion. “So that means he’s gotta be good. It’ll—” Seeing her scowling resolutely, he sighed and lowered his voice. “Okay, if I let you guard the entrance, will you please just let me have this?”

“Please” was not a frequent contributor to Fuyuhiko’s vocabulary. The swordfighter sighed to herself (heavier than he had moments before, it seemed) and muttered a begrudging acquiescence. She didn’t wait for a thank-you or any acknowledgement before trudging out of the tent and taking position. Victorious, the gangster stepped back toward Hagakure. “Hey, she’s gonna watch the entrance and guard us, got it?”

“Uh…” Hagakure's answer stalled as he strode toward the tent flaps and loosed the ropes holding them open. “Yeah, I—I mean, that’s cool. It kind of disrupts the process if anyone else steps in anyway, so that works.” The flaps dropped down and closed the portal to the outside, cutting off the bustle of the festivities instantly.

Fuyuhiko whistled at the new quiet. Nice tent. “So how accurate are you, usually?”

The owner moved back to the multitude of shelves in the back and fiddled with several objects, most of them sculptures or shapes made of glass or gemstones. (His guest’s attention was caught by one item on the shelf, the ugliest fuckin’ fish statue he’d ever laid eyes on—wait, didn’t that belong to his uncle once?) Even though his back was turned, the proud _harrumph_ in his tone was plain. “Well, not to brag, but _my_ fortunes are accurate at a thirty-percent rate.”

“Feh.” Spitting on the ground didn’t do much here; the tent didn’t have a carpet or anything, so Fuyuhiko was really just hocking at the earth. It was still kind of rude, though. “Guess you are just a common crook, then.”

Hagakure whipped around with a look of offense and pain. “Hey, man,” he whined with the most _hurt_ tone of voice, “that was uncalled for! Thirty percent’s, like, the best rate of any fortune teller in the world! I’m being real here!” He placed his hands on the back of what was apparently his chair and leaned on it, shaking his head in a tight arc. “If you think I’m a hack, why are you even here?”

Fuyuhiko plunked down in his own chair, dropping his bag on the table, and traced the pattern of the tablecloth with his finger. “Well, I… have a lot of variables in my life. Not enough of ‘em under my thumb yet.” He reached up to wave a dismissive hand at the soothsayer sitting across the way. “You think I don’t know how much of a long shot this all is, going to a fucking fortune teller? I know to take you people with a grain of salt. Even with your thirty fuckin’ percent.”

“Well,” Hagakure blurted defensively, “it’s not like that’s the best chance you can get!”

Finger halting, Fuyuhiko fixed a sharp stare on him. “You _just said_ it was.”

“Yeah, for a regular fortune! There’s other kinds!”

Against all instinct, and knowing this was clearly a bait, the gangster leaned forward, intrigued. “Like?”

Hagakure rubbed the side of his nose with a knuckle and smiled. “Oh, get ready, ‘cause this is gonna blow away your socks!” With a sudden rush of unexpected energy, he leaned in to the table and began running his hands over the surface of the crystal ball situated between the two boys. His voice lowered into the dramatic rumble of a movie announcer. “It’s the Creel of Fortune’s specialty, Fortune Tennis!”

Fuyuhiko swore he saw the mesh of colors on the glass ball swirling in response to the movements of those hands, precise as a figure skater. Probably a touch screen or something on the thing. Well, then the whole crystal ball would have to be a touch screen, actually. Whatever, it was still cool.

Oh, right. “The fuck is Fortune Tennis?”

Jutting out his lower lip, Hagakure launched back into a spiel. “In Fortune Tennis, both fortune teller and fortune hearer take turns drawing cards from the dispensers on the base of the crystal ball. Those cards are printed with unique fortunes, generated in real time! However, they can’t take too long or miss a card, or the ritual ends. As the players rack up a streak of cards, the accuracy of each fortune increases gradually!”

“So that’s how we get the good shit?” the other boy interrupted, throwing off the momentum of the speech. Fuyuhiko reached for his bag to get his wallet. “How much for one of those?”

“Oh, you pay after we finish.”

“So you can figure out during the game how much I can pay, so you can charge the highest possible price?” A sputtering confirmed that he’d hit the mark. “I get it. Not like I care. Money’s not an issue.”

Hagakure waited to see if he would continue, his cheek twitching gently once or twice. “So, you’re committing to this? Alright, here we—” Something resurged in his disheveled head, and he straightened up. “Hey, uh, I need to know your name before we start.”

“Why the hell do… oh, goddammit. Fine.” He breathed in slowly. “Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu.”

Hagakure’s eyes went wide. Everyone knew that family. He pushed down a loud gulp and put his hands back to the crystal ball. “Oh. R-right, yeah, I—I got it.” A few seconds of trembling silence passed before he regained his voice. “S-so that girl’s one of, like…”

“One of what?”

“You know!” he spat shrilly, voice cracking from nerves. “One of your… your wiseguys!”

“Does it matter?!” (The gangster hoped Hagakure wasn’t perceptive enough to realize how suspicious that reaction was. The dumbass was right. Assuming “wiseguy” meant what he thought it did.) “Are we ready now?”

One extravagant swoop of the hand suddenly triggered a change in the crystal ball. “Yeah, I think so. Here goes!” The ball materialized a starry pattern as it began to rotate in place, light projecting a hue of purple with yellow stars onto the canvas of the tent. Although the light was clearly emanating from the orb itself, Fuyuhiko didn’t feel it shining into his eyes. It was as if the surface of the interior canvas was a screen that had turned on, and its display matched the appearance of the controlling mechanism. The effect was a detachment of space, a feeling of being in another world entirely as the stand of the divining object began to grind like a printer.

Hagakure’s hand shot out to the slot on his side to grab the card and carry it to eye level. “An important business deal for the Kuzuryuu family will fall apart this week.”

“Wait, how the fuck did it know my name?!”

“Trade secret!”

“That doesn’t make any sense!” Kuzuryuu covered his face with one hand, massaging the bridge of his nose. “… That one better be wrong.”

Hagakure placed the card on the table, facedown. His hand went to fiddle with his hair as he remarked, “Gotta keep business running, eh?”

The heir to the Kuzuryuu family sighed, but his face stayed leaning on his hand. “When deals go south, it’s not good for anyone,” he said, voice quiet but shadowy, restrained above all. “You said these early ones have the lower probability?”

The fortune teller opened his mouth to respond, but the stand began to buzz again. “Ooh, that one’s yours! Go, get it, get it!” he urged as his patron awkwardly scrambled to reach for the card.

Fuyuhiko held the piece of paper just centimeters from his face and squinted. “Yasuhiro Hagakure will lose a trinket that is very importa—hold the fuck on, why is this about you?”

Hagakure violently swung his hands at the wrists like he was shaking water off of them in his customer’s direction. “Ahg! No, no, finish the sentence!”

“Yasuhiro Hagakure will lose a trinket that is very important to him! God!” Fuyuhiko slapped the card down, fuming at the complete lack of progress after two successful fortunes. He didn’t pay much attention as Hagakure dragged the card away to the other side of the table, explaining that sometimes the fortunes referred to him and he didn’t know why. (He took a moment to whimper about his upcoming loss, but his guest ignored that bit extra hard.) This was a waste of time. Was it worth it to keep going?

He realized Hagakure had already pulled the third card.

“Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu will be unable to find a yukata for next year and will be forced to borrow one from his sister again.” Hagakure paused without looking up. “Wait—”

“ _I did get one_!” the gangster screamed, face burning hard enough to set off a smoke detector. “The goddamn measurements were wrong, goddammit, for _fuck’s sake_!” went the screech that followed, punctuated by the heavy impact of his fist slamming the table.

A second later, Peko pulled open the tent flap and looked in, seemingly accusing both of murder with only the furrowing of her eyebrows. The boys hollered at her like middle-aged suburban dads do when someone walks in front of the TV during an intense ball game. Silently, Peko dropped the flap, and the portal to the outside closed.

Hagakure turned back to his patron, who was still simmering. “Um,” he began tremulously, “it’s, uh, your turn next, man.”

* * *

 

The festival was really rather dull. Maybe being forced to sit around and watch from one spot was influencing Peko’s bias, but she still didn’t like it.

As the boys were waiting before drawing the fourth card, the bodyguard on the outside stretched her shoulders and sighed. With the noise dampening on the tent canvas, she’d only barely heard her Young Master’s cries of anguish. Had he seriously been in trouble, she could have easily missed his signals. She knew this was a foolish idea from the very start, but he never listened, did he? Why was he so keen on endangering himself— peaches.

“Excuse me?”

Peko was suddenly brought back to reality by the gentle voice of a girl. She couldn’t be far from Peko’s own age. Her hair was dyed a deep blue and trailed down to her waist, perfectly straight, with an orchid adorning the top of her head. The strawberry-pink yukata she wore, tied back with a baby-blue obi, was a perfect complement not only to her gorgeous hair but to her soft, smoothly decorated face, which smiled innocently up into the swordfighter’s eyes.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” the girl began in a slightly songful tone, tilting her head to one side, “but I was hoping to have my fortune read here, and—”

“He’s busy.”

She blinked—eyelashes fluttered. “What do you mean?”

Peko ordered her brain to focus. “He’s got—” No, wait. “There’s already—” Dammit, backing up. “He’s already seeing someone else.”

The girl’s eyes widened. “Really? Hagakure-kun? Well, I’m happy for him, but that doesn’t explain why I can’t see him.” Her words didn’t carry any aggression; in fact, it was closer to benign amusement. Peko kept that in mind as the stranger stepped closer—and now she began catching the scent of alcohol on the girl’s breath.

That was another thing, her smell. She was wearing peach-scented perfume. How Peko managed to recognize that so easily with the pervading mess of scents that floated through this part of town, she didn’t know, but the smell lulled her into a sort of comfort that unfortunately began to deteriorate her focus. She had to shake her head to get past it, and when she came to a rest, she found the girl much closer than expected. ( _Wow_ , the booze was strong off of her. How much did she _have_?)

“She’s—” Peko backed up a step and cleared her throat loudly. “He’s already got a customer.”

“Ohhhhhhhhh!” The girl tapped a finger to her forehead playfully. “Of course! Silly me, I should have known! What’s your name?”

Against her better judgment, the swordfighter gave her the name, expecting a laugh at how ridiculous it sounded. To her surprise, the pink-clad stranger only nodded. “That’s a cute name. Nice to meet you, Pekoyama-san! I’m Sayaka Maizono! You know,” she chirped a little quieter, “you have really pretty eyes. And your hair looks good, too. I’m sure it looks lovely when you leave it down.”

“Yes, it—” No, she meant your hair, not hers! “Th-thank you,” Peko muttered at the earth. Aside from the obvious distraction, she was bitterly torn between her effort to listen in on the tent and her mild surprise at the identity of her new… acquaintance. “Maizono? That name is familiar, somehow.”

Maizono giggled _oh no she has a cute laugh_ before answering, “That’s because I’m an idol! My group is performing tonight, in fact! Over there, on the… the green stage, no, the—” Suddenly the idol shook her head with a tamely frustrated _hrrrrmmmm_ , causing her hair to swoosh and her bangs to splay across her forehead messily. “Ah, I forget what it’s called, but one of those!”

“I see.” Like the call of a siren, Maizono’s stray locks of hair just beckoned for someone to draw near and brush them away. Luckily, Peko was nothing if not disciplined—and to be honest, she did want some space. For all she was aware, a brawl could be unfolding within the confines of the tent right then, and she wouldn’t know, because this girl was distracting her. With a cough, she started, “Look, I’m sorry, but I need you to go somewhere else right now.”

“Wait, what? How come?” In an instant, the eyes behind those wayward blue strands sharpened into a dangerously focused (and unexpectedly sober) look. “Is something weird going on in there?”

Acting on trained instinct and protocol, Peko shot her right hand into the fold of her yukata and reached around her back with the other hand toward the bow of her obi. This girl likely wasn’t dangerous, but would-be assassins had used worse disguises before, and the risk wasn’t lost on her.

Tradition dictated that only the standard cotton undergarments were supposed to be worn under a yukata, and weapons weren’t allowed on the festival grounds for safety reasons. One of the perks of working in a yakuza family, though, was the secret gear. Peko’s obi came pre-tied, and was instead fastened by a small hook hidden under the bow for easy removal in case someone needed to go for their weapon. Belted around the silver-haired girl’s waist was a genuine sword, a somewhat shabby blade that she could afford to have confiscated. Reaching for the sword meant opening the robe and exposing herself, but embarrassment was preferable to a dead heir.

Now the idol was confused. “Why are you reaching for your bow?” And then her eyes yanked wide open. “Wait, are you going to pull off your clothes?”

Peko breathed in to answer—wait. This was a _terrible_ idea! She couldn’t brandish a sword at someone without serious cause—she’d get kicked out of the plaza, and then Young Master would be left to fend for himself! And if this girl was really famous, she could report Peko to the police, and then the Kuzuryuu clan would be at risk. They’d drop _her_ like a hot iron, of course, but there might still be a trail linking her back to the family, and then… that would also endanger her charge.

She had to come up with something right now.

And playing along was what she did best, after all.

“Yes,” was her reply, metallic and blunt. Maizono started babbling in befuddlement, like she believed some coherent thought would be mixed in with all the meaningless syllables; Peko overran her noises of confusion. “I’ll flash you right now if you don’t leave. I have no qualms with exposing myself if it means keeping you away from this place. I know you don’t want to see that.”

The idol gave no verbal response. But for a solid two seconds—short enough to be an attempt at stealth but too long to actually be stealthy—she broke eye contact as her gaze darted downwards, just a bit too low to be looking anywhere above Peko’s neck.

Uh.

“You know what? Never mind,” Peko spat, heat rising out of nowhere in her cheeks. “Look, can’t you—”

“ _Laaaaaaadies and gentlemen_!” An unpleasantly familiar voice blared out from the distance, somewhere among the stalls, seemingly filtered through some plastic tube. Where the hell? “Just a gentle reminder that it’s 5:45, which means it’s only fifteen minutes till the opening of the main musical attraction of the evening, the hit idol group _A.K.A._! Make sure to grab your seats now!” Peko finally zeroed in on the source of the noise and found Teruteru Hanamura, dolled up in a nicer-than-usual chef’s outfit, hastily stuffing a plastic megaphone under the table of his food stand.

Maizono stumbled around and looked back in confusion. “That’s… that’s us. We’re not on until—” her face tilted in every direction, disoriented—“until 7.” The idol began to lope away, saying “I’m sorry, I need to go sort this all out! It was nice meeting you, Pekoyama-san!”

Peko offered an awkward wave and a premature vocalization of agreement. After watching the unsteady exit of her new friend, she found Hanamura again and gave him a quick, uneasy nod. He cracked a sly grin back at her and waved.

It was a night of many firsts.

* * *

 

Right around the time that Pekoyama was discovering she had a visitor, Fuyuhiko was still silently fuming as the fourth card popped out of the machine. His partner across the way stuttered a series of noncommittal noises while gesturing over to him, before finally collecting a coherent sentence. “Uh... hello? You… wanna keep going?”

Finally the yakuza looked up and thumped the stand of the crystal ball, dragging the card with him. “Fine, fine,” he rasped angrily. Once again he had to hold the slip up close to his face to read the ornate print. “Yasuhiro Hagakure will become the seventh person in history to physically attack a member of the Kuzuryuu family and live.”

Before Fuyuhiko could go any further, he was rudely removed from his chair as Hagakure lunged across the table and slapped the shit out of him.

On the floor, the smaller boy loosed a sound somewhere between a hiss, a roar, and a bubbling noise. For a moment, he forgot that the gently colored stars on the walls weren’t just in his head. It was only his coughing, burning irritation that powered the gangster’s attempts to climb back to his feet. He was still dazed as he leaned on the back of his chair, but he could see Hagakure was back to sitting. “The _fuck_ , dude,” he groaned, not lucid enough to actually yell (or fight back, for that matter). “I could kill you for that!”

“Once-in-a-lifetime chance,” the fortune teller whispered at his twiddling thumbs.

“Yeah, a lifetime that’s gonna be real fuckin’ short!”

“Except the card said I’d survive!” Hagakure threw out the sentence defensively, raising his voice and pointing like he’d really made a strong argument. “So you’re _not_ gonna kill me!”

Fuyuhiko eased back into his seat, rubbing what was surely the site of a bright red mark now. He wondered if he could get one of the face-painter stalls to fill it in or something later. “Who was it who said these aren’t perfectly accurate?”

Hagakure nearly went to protest, but the stand was creaking at them again. “Wait, it’s my turn again! Hold on!” The card came out, was scooped up, and read right out loud.

“Yasuhiro Hagakure’s achievement of getting away with harming a member of the Kuzuryuu clan will be nullified by the Araragi Clause.”

Fuyuhiko stared. Reality was back, and it had smacked him much harder than the weirdo who’d had the gall to slap him a few seconds earlier. Fear crawled into his nails as he balled up his fists, caught like a deer in headlights, frozen. It was unseemly for a yakuza heir to be caught off-guard, but here he was, trapped.

He had no idea what to do. So he took his own turn at lunging across the table, and he punched Hagakure square in the cheek. The sap went down easy.

Now splayed in the dirt, the fortune teller made a noise like a beached whale as he rolled around in pain. Fuyuhiko hardly noticed, as he’d already turned his back and walked to the opposite corner of the tent. Both their heads were swimming, he mused bitterly. Not the time to be clever, but it was hard not to think of it. Indeed, Fuyuhiko was thoroughly mired in his own thoughts, too buried in confusion to notice the ticking of the crystal ball or the slow dissipation of the patterns on the tent canvas.

The fuckin’ Araragi Clause. Holy shit.

… _Really_?

* * *

 

Decades earlier, the Kuzuryuu crime family clutched the islands of Japan in an iron grip. Organized crime was blossoming wildly across the nation in that era, and they reaped the benefits. A network of cousins and trusted associates carried on the duties and connections through the generations, from kid to kid. Each member of the family had their own style of handling things—some more vicious and violent, others more conniving and roguish.

The youngest generation in the fifties had three kids, brothers, who were comfortable in their new adulthood. One of them, Toranosuke Kuzuryuu, was not only in the middle of his older and younger brothers, but also in the middle of the road as far as temperaments were concerned.

A man who spent much of his time cleaning up his siblings’ messes, Toranosuke was twenty-four years old, with a lanky build and soft jaw-length hair, dyed blonde in a trend that would continue down the line. He also was making an effort to grow a matching beard, which was generally agreed by others to be a mistake, but he didn’t really care if they disapproved. He was an adult, dammit.

Toranosuke worked more with his heart than with his hands, words, or brain. Even though he was undeniably born into a mob family, he made efforts to stick to legal means of doing business. He also couldn’t hold a grudge very well, so his brothers rarely took him out on jobs. As a result, he didn’t have much strife in his soft, cushiony life.

That was until one of his warehouses was robbed.

And not just broken into and vandalized. He lost a third of his stock.

A thief insulting the Kuzuryuu family was cause for an uproar among all of its members, but Toranosuke insisted on handling it himself. It was deeply personal. For the first time in his career, he had a mark to chase. A real target. And his family, though disgruntled at being excluded, accepted that he had a chance to really prove his stones.

From then on, the mafia man insisted on overseeing his businesses and factories, monitoring them for any signs of intruders. The bandit continued to strike, always at a site far away from him. Security guards would occasionally catch a glimpse of the culprit and report that the thief was a woman, but other than that, there was nothing to go on. After three successful raids, she stopped showing up.

On a whim, Toranosuke decided to visit his older brother’s auto parts warehouse. Sitting alone in the haze of a fall night, he waited by the side of the building with no real plan or expectation of what might happen. One can only imagine his surprise when he spotted the girl emerging from an air duct around midnight.

They made eye contact. No one moved.

And then they both took off at once.

The chase led them through dark alleys, over fences, up and down the new fire escapes, as the legend goes. The girl was agile as hell, but her pursuer had been a damn good gymnast in secondary school, and somehow he managed to keep up. Eventually the thief made a mistake; she veered off the streets into a city park, but she didn’t know the layout of the place, so after five minutes she was stuck on an ornate bridge stretching over the little creek winding through the park, staring at a fence too high to climb in her fatigue. When Toranosuke caught up with her, she wordlessly pulled out a butterfly knife. He did the same.

They were about to dive at each other when they heard a police siren.

The girl suddenly hauled ass to the other end of the bridge and made a U-turn to run and hide underneath it, finding a narrow strip of riverbank between the bridge’s base and the water. Out of ideas, Toranosuke followed her.

It turned out some employee of the park had been working late and saw the flash of shadowy figures running past, and he got antsy and called the cops. Now the two rogues were caught together. If anyone made a loud noise, the cops would find them. If anyone got stab-happy, the blood would run into the creek and the body would turn up the next day. If anyone ran, they’d get caught for sure, and neither was gonna risk it. So what else was there to do?

They sat there and waited out the raid. It took hours—the police decided to be thorough just that night—so they had time to talk, at least in hushed whispers that clammed up at the sound of even distant footsteps. That was them, the trolls under the bridges, a pair of koi fishes quietly lamenting their inability to swim away from their problems—Toranosuke Kuzuryuu, heir to the biggest mob family in the city, and the lady thief, whose name was Hisako Araragi.

Nobody knows what they talked about. But after the cops left, they went their separate ways, peacefully.

And two weeks later, they announced their plans to marry.

Of course the whole clan was up in arms about it—an enemy of the family? He was going to betray them like that? Arguments flared constantly between the more forgiving Kuzuryuus and those who were strict about the rules. Toranosuke tried to argue that marrying Hisako meant their property would be shared, which meant that what she stole would technically belong to the family again, but Hisako herself laughed at that proposal, informing him (with a tear of mirth in her eye) that she was not about to hand anything back. To the victor went the spoils, after all. (Helpful broad, she was.)

Nobody budged until Uncle Masanori barged in with his own solution to the problem. Uncle didn’t really care about how this girl had insulted the clan. Political issues like that weren’t his thing. But he wrote romantic poetry in his free time, so naturally, forbidden love was relevant to his interests. As he explained, his solution was a simple addendum to the rules of the clan, one that would not only put this conflict to rest, but would also address any future occurrences. Pulling out a crumpled piece of paper, he read before the family in a booming voice:

_Should a child of the Kuzuryuu be wed to one who has transgressed against the clan, then, at the approval of the child’s parents, the outsider shall be absolved of their crimes and aggressions against the family._

As he crumpled the sheet back up again, he added that the new rule should be called the Araragi Clause.

There was some fight left in the most stubborn of the gangsters in that household. They resisted. But once it was clear that Toranosuke’s parents were in support of the measure, nobody could keep arguing against it. As long as he was happy, they thought.

So the two were wed. It was a beautiful white wedding, yadda yadda yadda, hooray. Happily ever after. They weren’t such a bad team, really. It worked out.

But one observation was made routinely by the others in the family (usually followed by some form of an “I told you so”): the Araragi Clause was never used again after that one time.

* * *

 

The tiny gangster ran furiously through the roster of his relatives.

Ayane? _She got married._

Hotaru? _Dedicated bachelorette. Never even dated. Not likely to start with this guy._

Tsukiko? _Got a new boyfriend up north. Rich guy._

Sayuri? _Lesbian._

That left… his sister.

Oh, _fuck_ no.

Fuyuhiko whipped around to find that the owner of the tent was standing again, and complaining about the end of the game. Who cared about the fucking game? “How the fuck old are you?”

Hagakure jerked up his head, a look of terror painted on his face. “Huh?”

“ _How_ —” stomp—“the _fuck_ —” stomp—“ _old are you_?!” Fuyuhiko’s rapid approach backed the (much) taller man against his own shelves.

“Abu—d-de—Err—”

“ _That’s not an answer_!”

“Twenty!” blurted the fortune teller, voice cracking again.

Wow. Really? He seemed older. “Look, deadshit, you got a girlfriend?”

Another loud gulp of air. “N-no, man, I—”

“Good.” The gangster pushed himself into his target, neck craning hard to make eye contact, no personal space left uninvaded. He jabbed a finger into the whimpering slob’s chin. “Now you listen to me. You ever meet some girl a few inches taller than me, long blonde hair, shitty attitude, you stay away from her, got it?” A nod in response. “Otherwise you sleep with the fishes!”

Fuyuhiko backed off as Hagakure nodded vigorously, stammering “Wh-whatever you say, man! Girls… like that aren’t even m-my type!” As the gangster turned and started walking back, there was an afterthought. “Although, I mean, in a place like this, aren’t we both kinda like fishes already? I mean—”

Fuyuhiko spun on his heels and crushed the air between his curled, flexing fingers. “ _What the fuck does that even mean_?!”

“It’s just a pun! I’m sorry!”

The tent flap was lifted open, and Peko peered in. The note of irritation in her voice was impossible to miss. “Can we _leave_ now?”

“Fuck yeah, we can.”

Fuyuhiko reached for his bag and found that the contents had spilled out on the table during the ruckus. As he hastily scraped his belongings back into it, he heard Hagakure’s voice again. “So, uh, do I ever get to know what the Araragi Clause is?”

“Fuck no,” came the answer as its speaker strode to the entranceway. As he walked out, he paused; abruptly, he dug his hand into his bag and pulled out a wad of money, which he threw on the table. More than he probably needed to pay, but whatever got him out faster.

Great. A bunch of money wasted, and he knew nothing else important except that someone in his family was doomed to be betrothed to this hopeless idiot. Nothing about his own future, the status of the family, who went on to lead the clan, nothing—just vague promises of approaching annoyances.

* * *

 

Yasuhiro Hagakure watched his patron leave with a lot of conflicting feelings.

He didn’t know what the Araragi Clause was, but he sure hoped it came into effect soon. He didn’t like the prospect of being an enemy of the mob.

He also wasn’t sure why the Kuzuryuu kid was so concerned with his dating life. What was that about? Not like it mattered, really.

Yasuhiro hadn’t had the chance to explain that he was gay, meaning whatever girl the shorty had in mind was safe. But maybe it was good he never brought it up.

* * *

 

“Why does he know about the Araragi Clause?” she asked as they were leaving.

“It’s fine, Peko. Forget about it.”

“If I may be frank, Young Ma—Kuzuryuu, I’m not in the mood to be kept out of the loop. And clearly, you’ve put yourself at risk enough times tonight.”

He scoffed as he went to look at the girl on his left. What the hell did she—oh, right, the slap mark. “Look, Peko—”

“So he did strike you?”

“Fucking—forget it, okay? Whatever! I got him back, anyway!” Seeing an eyebrow rise on his bodyguard, he imitated the motion. “Right hook. Knocked him off the chair.”

Peko shook her head, loose strands of hair drifting out of the bun. “Still, I should—” She stopped that thought where it was, but her companion already noticed her right hand reaching over to her left side. Already groaning in his head, he scampered around her so he was walking on her left, and before she could protest, he jabbed her in the side, finding a hard object as he expected.

“For fuck’s sake, really? You snuck a goddamn sword in here?!”

She didn’t make eye contact now. “It was for your safety, Kuzuryuu.”

His sigh was the most exasperated of the night. “Look, can’t we go one goddamn night without you threatening to cut someone?!” He registered a sudden inhalation on her end, which confirmed his suspicion that she’d tried it when he wasn’t looking. Man, he was guessing right on a lot of things tonight.

“Even so—” started the swordfighter, raising her voice in irritation, but something interrupted her. Fuyuhiko checked where she was looking and followed her line of sight. They were passing the green stage now, and people were gathering for some group or another. One girl in a pink yukata and dark blue hair turned around (hang on, she looked familiar), and her face lit up as she waved at them happily.

Confused, Fuyuhiko went to wave back, but he noticed Peko briefly raise her own hand before looking down and quickening her pace. They were soon too far to look back at the stage, and he whistled a bit. “Isn’t that girl an idol?”

His companion grumbled something inscrutable without looking up. But she was definitely blushing.

“Well, look at that,” he said to nobody in particular. “You didn’t even want to stand guard, and now you’ve made a new… _friend_.” The tone of superiority in his voice turned jeering as he punctuated the last word with an elbow to her side.

“Can we just go home now?”

* * *

 

Peko breathed a massive sigh of relief. Out of the yukata, back into normal clothes.

Her room wasn’t much. The Kuzuryuu manor was more focused on giving nice living quarters to its children than its technical adoptees, so she had a guest room. Not that Peko was bitter about this. She didn’t need extravagance. The basic furniture setup worked for her.

Continuing the sigh (she’d been holding in a lot of them today, so there was plenty to get out), she grabbed her phone off her dresser and allowed herself to tip over and fall onto her bed. So nice to be off her feet. After directing a hum of content into her pillow, she rolled over onto her back to check the device, not expec—

A new text. And from an unrecognized number.

Peko’s blood fizzed icily in her chest. Nobody should know about her number aside from her classmates, and they all exchanged numbers at the start of the year. Who could it be? The message opened under the urging of rapid fingers:

{ (555) 223-1921 }: _Hello, Pekoyama-san? This is the right number, right?_

The furious scramble of buttons pushed out a non-answer.

_“Who is this? How did you get this number?”_

It was thirty minutes before she got an answer, phone vibrating. Even in all that time, despite the softness of the bed she missed, she could not relax.

{ (555) 223-1921 }: _It’s me, Maizono! Oh, and your friend gave it to me!_

Peko had had enough blushing for one day, thank you very much, but the blood in her cheeks (having defrosted in record time) was clearly not tired at all. Even in the cool of the indoors, she felt her face heating up. Swear words escaped her lips as she clumsily hurried to add the idol as a contact.

_“What friend?”_

Then, after some consideration,

_“Are you still drunk?”_

The typing symbol stayed on the screen for a long time. She may have already been in the middle of a response. Oops.

{ Maizono }: _Drunk? Oh, no, I wasn’t drunk before! Did I smell?_

_“It was really strong. And you were acting a little tipsy. I’m surprised you weren't stopped by your stage manager or someone.”_

{ Maizono }: _Heehee! Well, you wouldn’t guess it, but I pride myself on being a heavyweight!_

{ Maizono }: _…Um, please don’t tell on me._

Just drunk enough to reveal more than she should, then.

_“So who gave you my number again?”_

{ Maizono }: _The cook! He was at one of the food stands, and it turned out he saw us talking, so he asked how I knew you! And then it turns out he’s your classmate!_

Her phone hand flopped down onto the bed, and her other hand curled into a fist that she shook at the ceiling. _Hanamuraaaaaaaa_. She heard another buzz and held the phone up again.

{ Maizono }: _Everyone in each class shares their numbers—that’s what he told me, I mean, I already knew about that, but he reminded me—so I asked if I could get yours! He was really nice about it, too!_

_“Wait, how did you already know about sharing contact info?”_

The grand distribution of phone numbers was a rite of passage into Hope’s Peak Academy, sort of. The classes admitted were so small, it just made sense to get in touch with everyone in your year, so each new class of freshmen made sure to exchange numbers with their group. Peko had experienced that process herself a few months ago when she first entered the school.

{ Maizono }: _Well, I kind of… got a letter a week or two ago from Hope’s Peak Academy, and it sort of implied I was being considered for admission, so I did some research._

She felt her heartbeat flutter like the eyelashes of the girl she’d met that night.

_“So… you might be coming to Hope’s Peak.”_

{ Maizono }: _Yes, next spring! If it works out, you’ll be my senpai, right?_

Okay, maybe hearts weren’t supposed to move like that.

{ Maizono }: _Oh, and also, I think peppermint really suits you._

Peko breathed out slowly, measuring her airflow, as she lowered the phone onto the bed next to her.

… What was she supposed to think? How weird it was that suddenly she was deep in the throes of romantic conflict, and it all happened in the span of one night? Was this crush really that serious, though? Was it? Her heartbeat was still ricocheting off the walls. It had to be.

Suddenly a realization hit her.

Hanamura had helped set her up with someone else.

With a girl he could have easily made a pass at, but didn’t.

… Was he feeling okay?

* * *

 

Fuyuhiko power-walked to the doorway of the kitchen and hollered, “ _Natsu_!”

“Christ, what the hell are you _yelling_ for?” Natsuhime Kuzuryuu, his little sister (he insisted on referring to her as such, not just because it was the proper way to address her according to yakuza hierarchy, but because he needed to ignore her growing height advantage), walked out of the kitchen with a formative sneer on her face. She’d been down at the festival earlier in the day already, so she was now traipsing around in her pajamas—although she hadn’t taken out her kitty hairclip, he noticed. (He didn’t recognize it. Must be new.) Before she closed her mouth from shouting back at him, she stuffed a gummy in her mouth from the bag she was carrying, which was maybe a quarter full of only the yellow ones. (Were they packaging them by flavor now?)

Lip twitching at the disrespect, the _sass_ on this one, he waved a hand in front of his face. “Look, you got a boyfriend?”

Natsuhime munched thoughtfully on the gummy for a second. “Yeah, something like that. You can’t have him, either.”

Biting back a curse (be the adult, Fuyuhiko), he grabbed her upper arms, pressing the loops of the bag he was still carrying into her sleeve. “What does he look like? Tall, weird hair—”

“Hey, calm the fuck down, ‘Hiko!” she interrupted. “Fuckin’ hell. No, he’s not like that. He’s, like, the shortest person I know.”

Fuyuhiko breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Keep him,” he commanded as he went to leave. Then he stopped, weight on his right heel and left toes, and pivoted to his left to turn back around and face her, left heel and right toes. “Wait, you go for shorter guys?”

His sister, already on the way out of the room, paused in the middle of shoveling a handful of gummies into her mouth. “Yeah, you’d think I’d have enough of short assholes, but sh—hey, the world is full of surprises.”

Aware he was missing something in that sentence and not caring, Fuyuhiko walked right back out and flipped the bird over his shoulder as he went.

Turning the corner, he reached absentmindedly into his bag and immediately found something he wasn’t expecting. A statuette or something?

Oh, fuck. The second fortune. “Yasuhiro Hagakure will lose a trinket that is very important to him.”

Great.

**Author's Note:**

> This is so long! Holy hell! And it wouldn't be nearly as long if the Pekosaya hadn't taken over the fic! I really wasn't planning it originally, and it wasn't going to be nearly as present until I was already writing! (Not that I regret it, but still!)  
> Toranosuke and Hisako's story is one that's been knocking around in my head since I thought of this fic's premise, and I'm probably gonna write it at some point. Who knows!  
> The "Creel of Fortune" sounds weird, like I was really reaching for a good pun on Wheel of Fortune. I was, but I found out that a "creel" is a woven basket used to hold fish. So I figured, why not have the boys be repeatedly paralleled by fish? That's where half the oblique references to fish come from. The others were natural, and I just figured I'd run with them.  
> I also chose "AKA" as the name of Maizono's group since the only members I know the name of are Sayaka and Ayakaa I think, and they have it in-- yeah.


End file.
